So much craziness over the cap and who goes and who signs. I have clarity now thanks to some good discussions with my fellow Steelers fans of Dallas and some thinking......

This is what I think.... the Steelers are holding off on their tough salary cap decisions to provide a smoke screen for the draft itself. I predict that they are going to let Farrior and maybe even Foote go at the last possible moment. Thus immediately raising ILB to a need position in the 1st round. This may force some teams hands on Hightower or "wack job" Burflict and help drop our true targets at OG (Glenn) or DT (Poe) into our waiting arms. Lets let the Combine play out and re-evaluate but that is what I see.

It really is an honor to be a born and raised Steelers fan. What other team has players restructuring like us we so to keep the "window" open for at least one more year! So impressed by our team. I just hope we don't have to pay the piper by going to cap hell in a few years.

Eddie Spaghetti

02-24-2012, 12:09 AM

every team in the league has players willing to restructure.

who wouldn't want all their money up front?

steelblood

02-24-2012, 08:36 AM

The Steelers will cut most if not all of the players they want to BEFORE free agency begins (on the 11th of March I believe). They will do this because they do not want to risk player backlash (and they care about their players). Holding players back and releasing them after free agency begins will potentially cause them to lose out on opportunities to sign with other teams and possibly leave these players will much smaller salaries than they could have signed or no job at all.

Now, if the draft plays out in a way that leaves an older player obsolete, then there may be a cut after the draft. But, I doubt the Steelers will hold off until late April to let players go.

steeler_fan_in_t.o.

02-24-2012, 06:23 PM

What other team has players restructuring like us we so to keep the "window" open for at least one more year! So impressed by our team.

You do know that "restructuring" is extremely beneficial to the player, right?

On a restructure, the player gets a large portion of his next year's salary up front and they now call it "bonus" and spread the cap hit out over the remaining life of his contract. So, Ben is still getting the same amount of money in 2012, but he is getting all except $900K of it in one lump sum check this week.

The other benefit is that putting more and more money up as bonus makes it more difficult to cut a player later on because the cap hit would just be too high. Ben is a huge winner in this, he is not doing any favors.